At-Will DPRs

Mar 10, 2010: I'm on vacation for the next 3 weeks. Will update more when I get back!

Leading Strike, Intuitive Strike, and Magic Weapon at level 30 added.

Generic comparison of Twin Strike and Piercing Strike at level 30 is up, with surprising results.

I haven't found a resource for comparing at-will powers across the classes, so I compiled the following comparison of at-will powers at level 1, using CharOp's favorite metric - DPR.

For a more extensive comparison, I've decided to include leader at-wills and had their effect on party DPR factored in. Some of my findings were a bit surprising, especially with regards to which powers are most effective at straight damage. I also found that there are extremely few cases where a primary attack ability score of 18 and a rider ability of 18 beats a primary 20 rider 16 combination.

I would like to update this with an analysis of at-will DPRs at level 11 and level 21, but it's obviously a lot more difficult to make reasonable assumptions with regards to feats, hit probability, and average character DPR at those levels. Any help and input would be appreciated.

*****

At-Will Power Comparison at Level 1

General Assumptions

1) Average character hit probability is 70%, and average DPR is 10.2) Party size (including you) is 5 members.3) Primary attack ability scores are always 20 unless otherwise noted.4) No feats are assumed.5) MM average defenses are used to calculate hit probability.6) For simplicity's sake, critical hit chances are ignored. For characters that have multiple attack rolls (rangers, avengers, and invokers using HoR) their DPR should be slightly higher than shown.

Guiding StrikeAssumptions: Cha 20, you're using a longsword, have combat advantage, and 2 people who can hit the defense you nuked hits the target if you hit.DPR: Yourself (0.8*9.5) + Allies (0.8*0.1*10)*2 = 9.2

Most of the higher DPR at-wills require more assumptions. This being said, flanking in melee is very easy to achieve, whereas ranged attackers and chargers usually don't have such an easy means of gaining CA.

It comes as no surprise that a Brutal Scoundrel is the king of level 1 generic striker DPR, but I was surprised to see an Avenger at-will in a not so distant second. All it requires is 1 ally flanking your enmity target with you, and you can pump out nearly 14.5 DPR. Nothing else comes close to that. Ranger at-wills, having no static mods yet, are fairly weak to average at this level, though it should be noted that the Throw and Stab + Marauder's Rush combo is amazing whenever you are able to charge.

In the leader section, Commander's Strike and Magic Weapon are best in class as expected. With the recent errata, Righteous Brand clocked in at a notch below. It's also interesting to note, however, that Paint the Bulls-Eye is actually extremely good for a ranged at-will power, even outside of nova turns. Bard at-wills, meanwhile, are weaker than I thought - especially Staggering Note.

Controllers in general don't have many DPR-worthy at-wills when you work under the assumption that area bursts are fairly unreliable. The exception is the invoker's Hand of Radiance. In nearly all battles, there are at least 3 enemies to target, and thus HoR is useful for much of the battle. It's also great at clearing minions, and radiant is arguably the strongest energy type.

*****

At-Will Power Comparison at Level 30

General Assumptions

1) Average character hit probability is 70%, and average DPR is 40.2) Party size (including you) is 5 members.3) Primary attack ability scores are 28 unless otherwise noted.4) MM average defenses are used to calculate hit probability.5) For simplicity's sake, critical hit chances are ignored. For characters that have multiple attack rolls (rangers, avengers, and invokers using HoR) their DPR should be slightly higher than shown.6) Each character will have access to one feat that is deemed indispensable; this will be listed with the specific assumptions in each entry. Eg. For martial characters, this will likely be Weapon Proficiency.

Intuitive StrikeAssumptions: Str 28 Cha/Wis 24, you're wielding a longsword and flanking the target (Vexing Flanker), and everyone is able to gain the full bonus to hit vs. the target (+8 including CA) if you hit.DPR: Yourself (0.9*24) + Allies (0.9*0.4*40)*4 = 79.2Note: If the 70% to hit probability holds and thus only +5 of the to-hit bonus can be used, DPR = 57.6

If you are assuming Piercing Strike is using sneak attack with CA; why are you not assuming Twin Strike is using Hunter's quarry? For that matter, why does your rogue get to add a paragon feat, while others do not?

Should this comparison not be lvl 1 across the board with no feats or class abilities, (or all class abilities) in order to better compare the at wills/

Cheers.

Edit: to add punctuation and remove any misunderstanding of negativity.also because I cannot read , apparently.

List of no-action attacks.Dynamic vs Static BonusesPhalanx tactics and buildsCrivens! A Pictsies GuideGood
Powers to intentionally miss withMr. Cellophane: How to be unnoticedWay's to fire around cornersCrits: what their really worthRetroactive bonus vs Static bonus.Runepriest handbook & discussion threadHoly Symbols to hang around your neckWays to Gain or Downgrade ActionsList of bonuses to saving throwsThe Ghost with the Most (revenant handbook)

Pocket Protector Pixie Stealth Knight. Maximizing the defender's aura by being in an ally's/enemy's square.

Yakuza NinjIntimiAdin: Perma-stealth Striker that offers a little protection for ally's, and can intimidate bloodied enemies. Very Strong.

Chargeburgler with cheese Ranged attacks at the end of a charge along with perma-stealth. Solid, could be overpowered if tweaked.

Void Defender Defends giving a penalty to hit anyone but him, then removing himself from play. Can get somewhat broken in epic.

Scry and Die Attacking from around corners, while staying hidden. Moderate to broken, depending on the situation.

Skimisher Fly in, attack, and fly away. Also prevents enemies from coming close. Moderate to Broken depending on the enemy, but shouldn't make the game un-fun, as the rest of your team is at risk, and you have enough weaknesses.

Indestructible Simply won't die, even if you sleep though combat. One of THE most abusive character in 4e.

Death's Gatekeeper A fun twist on a healic, making your party "unkillable". Overpowered to Broken, but shouldn't actually make the game un-fun, just TPK proof.

Death's Gatekeeper mk2, (Stealth Edition) Make your party "unkillable", and you hidden, while doing solid damage. Stronger then the above, but also easier for a DM to shut down. Broken, until your DM get's enough of it.

Domination and Death Dominate everything then kill them quickly. Only works @ 30, but is broken multiple ways.

Is there a way without hybrid rules to get either the "wield two one handed weapons instead of one one handed and one offhand"? Because if so, I have an awesome half-elf avenger- Kensi- Eternal defender build.

Is there a way without hybrid rules to get either the "wield two one handed weapons instead of one one handed and one offhand"? Because if so, I have an awesome half-elf avenger- Kensi- Eternal defender build.

I'm not sure what your asking, but there's a ranger MC "two-blade warrior" that let's you wield normals size weapon in your off hand".

List of no-action attacks.Dynamic vs Static BonusesPhalanx tactics and buildsCrivens! A Pictsies GuideGood
Powers to intentionally miss withMr. Cellophane: How to be unnoticedWay's to fire around cornersCrits: what their really worthRetroactive bonus vs Static bonus.Runepriest handbook & discussion threadHoly Symbols to hang around your neckWays to Gain or Downgrade ActionsList of bonuses to saving throwsThe Ghost with the Most (revenant handbook)

Pocket Protector Pixie Stealth Knight. Maximizing the defender's aura by being in an ally's/enemy's square.

Yakuza NinjIntimiAdin: Perma-stealth Striker that offers a little protection for ally's, and can intimidate bloodied enemies. Very Strong.

Chargeburgler with cheese Ranged attacks at the end of a charge along with perma-stealth. Solid, could be overpowered if tweaked.

Void Defender Defends giving a penalty to hit anyone but him, then removing himself from play. Can get somewhat broken in epic.

Scry and Die Attacking from around corners, while staying hidden. Moderate to broken, depending on the situation.

Skimisher Fly in, attack, and fly away. Also prevents enemies from coming close. Moderate to Broken depending on the enemy, but shouldn't make the game un-fun, as the rest of your team is at risk, and you have enough weaknesses.

Indestructible Simply won't die, even if you sleep though combat. One of THE most abusive character in 4e.

Death's Gatekeeper A fun twist on a healic, making your party "unkillable". Overpowered to Broken, but shouldn't actually make the game un-fun, just TPK proof.

Death's Gatekeeper mk2, (Stealth Edition) Make your party "unkillable", and you hidden, while doing solid damage. Stronger then the above, but also easier for a DM to shut down. Broken, until your DM get's enough of it.

Domination and Death Dominate everything then kill them quickly. Only works @ 30, but is broken multiple ways.

List of no-action attacks.Dynamic vs Static BonusesPhalanx tactics and buildsCrivens! A Pictsies GuideGood
Powers to intentionally miss withMr. Cellophane: How to be unnoticedWay's to fire around cornersCrits: what their really worthRetroactive bonus vs Static bonus.Runepriest handbook & discussion threadHoly Symbols to hang around your neckWays to Gain or Downgrade ActionsList of bonuses to saving throwsThe Ghost with the Most (revenant handbook)

Pocket Protector Pixie Stealth Knight. Maximizing the defender's aura by being in an ally's/enemy's square.

Yakuza NinjIntimiAdin: Perma-stealth Striker that offers a little protection for ally's, and can intimidate bloodied enemies. Very Strong.

Chargeburgler with cheese Ranged attacks at the end of a charge along with perma-stealth. Solid, could be overpowered if tweaked.

Void Defender Defends giving a penalty to hit anyone but him, then removing himself from play. Can get somewhat broken in epic.

Scry and Die Attacking from around corners, while staying hidden. Moderate to broken, depending on the situation.

Skimisher Fly in, attack, and fly away. Also prevents enemies from coming close. Moderate to Broken depending on the enemy, but shouldn't make the game un-fun, as the rest of your team is at risk, and you have enough weaknesses.

Indestructible Simply won't die, even if you sleep though combat. One of THE most abusive character in 4e.

Death's Gatekeeper A fun twist on a healic, making your party "unkillable". Overpowered to Broken, but shouldn't actually make the game un-fun, just TPK proof.

Death's Gatekeeper mk2, (Stealth Edition) Make your party "unkillable", and you hidden, while doing solid damage. Stronger then the above, but also easier for a DM to shut down. Broken, until your DM get's enough of it.

Domination and Death Dominate everything then kill them quickly. Only works @ 30, but is broken multiple ways.

While it's amusing that you didn't count Warlocks among the strikers, it would be good to have at least a few of their at-wills in there for reference. Eldritch Strike/Blast and Hellish Rebuke, if nothing else.

(I employ zie/zie/zir as a gender-neutral counterpart to he/him/his. Just a heads-up.)
Essentials definitely isn't for me as a player, and I feel that its design and implementation bear serious flaws which fill me with concern for the future of D&D, but I've come to the conclusion that it isn't going to destroy the game that I want to play. Indeed, I think that I could probably run a game for players using Essentials characters without it being much of a problem at all. Time will tell, I suppose.

List of no-action attacks.Dynamic vs Static BonusesPhalanx tactics and buildsCrivens! A Pictsies GuideGood
Powers to intentionally miss withMr. Cellophane: How to be unnoticedWay's to fire around cornersCrits: what their really worthRetroactive bonus vs Static bonus.Runepriest handbook & discussion threadHoly Symbols to hang around your neckWays to Gain or Downgrade ActionsList of bonuses to saving throwsThe Ghost with the Most (revenant handbook)

Pocket Protector Pixie Stealth Knight. Maximizing the defender's aura by being in an ally's/enemy's square.

Yakuza NinjIntimiAdin: Perma-stealth Striker that offers a little protection for ally's, and can intimidate bloodied enemies. Very Strong.

Chargeburgler with cheese Ranged attacks at the end of a charge along with perma-stealth. Solid, could be overpowered if tweaked.

Void Defender Defends giving a penalty to hit anyone but him, then removing himself from play. Can get somewhat broken in epic.

Scry and Die Attacking from around corners, while staying hidden. Moderate to broken, depending on the situation.

Skimisher Fly in, attack, and fly away. Also prevents enemies from coming close. Moderate to Broken depending on the enemy, but shouldn't make the game un-fun, as the rest of your team is at risk, and you have enough weaknesses.

Indestructible Simply won't die, even if you sleep though combat. One of THE most abusive character in 4e.

Death's Gatekeeper A fun twist on a healic, making your party "unkillable". Overpowered to Broken, but shouldn't actually make the game un-fun, just TPK proof.

Death's Gatekeeper mk2, (Stealth Edition) Make your party "unkillable", and you hidden, while doing solid damage. Stronger then the above, but also easier for a DM to shut down. Broken, until your DM get's enough of it.

Domination and Death Dominate everything then kill them quickly. Only works @ 30, but is broken multiple ways.

Changed the Throw and Stab entry to quick draw a maul on the charge for a slightly boosted DPR. Added Eldritch Blast so that the warlocks are represented - as expected, the result is fairly mediocre.

Added the ranged version of Twin Strike and Careful Attack for comparison (Careful Attack seems to be better than Twin Strike at level 1). Also added a note in the Throw and Stab section detailing DPR of Marauder's Rush alone without charging.

Huh?? At Level 1, that Warlock is out-DPR-ing both the Ranger and the Barbarian. Using an actually GOOD At-Will would also make a difference.

The warlock isn't out-DPR-ing a ranger... I've updated with some other ranger at-wills for reference. And yes, barbarians are weaker because they don't have a striker feature such as quarry, sneak attack, or curse. Their advantages are their higher AC and hit points.

Regarding good at-wills, if you're talking about Hellish Rebuke, I'm not sure how to include it because as far as I know there is no reliable way at level 1 to force the secondary damage.

The warlock isn't out-DPR-ing a ranger... I've updated with some other ranger at-wills for reference. And yes, barbarians are weaker because they don't have a striker feature such as quarry, sneak attack, or curse. Their advantages are their higher AC and hit points.

Just curious, why is the autobuild characters having feats that looks as if they were randomly picked (two blade ranger with blowgun, fighter with mark of healing, dragonborn archer rangers). It seems like a random assortment of characters/races builds.

Just curious, why is the autobuild characters having feats that looks as if they were randomly picked (two blade ranger with blowgun, fighter with mark of healing, dragonborn archer rangers). It seems like a random assortment of characters/races builds.

Not ever archer ranger will be an elf. The figher might take the mark for RP reasons. A two-bladed ranger with a blowgun... ok i have no idea why that would happen, pretend he took ritual casting instead.

It's ment to be a base for new/non-optimal, but still viable PC (I just hit "quick character" and looked at the at-will powers). To give us a base from which to compare optimal PC's from.

List of no-action attacks.Dynamic vs Static BonusesPhalanx tactics and buildsCrivens! A Pictsies GuideGood
Powers to intentionally miss withMr. Cellophane: How to be unnoticedWay's to fire around cornersCrits: what their really worthRetroactive bonus vs Static bonus.Runepriest handbook & discussion threadHoly Symbols to hang around your neckWays to Gain or Downgrade ActionsList of bonuses to saving throwsThe Ghost with the Most (revenant handbook)

Pocket Protector Pixie Stealth Knight. Maximizing the defender's aura by being in an ally's/enemy's square.

Yakuza NinjIntimiAdin: Perma-stealth Striker that offers a little protection for ally's, and can intimidate bloodied enemies. Very Strong.

Chargeburgler with cheese Ranged attacks at the end of a charge along with perma-stealth. Solid, could be overpowered if tweaked.

Void Defender Defends giving a penalty to hit anyone but him, then removing himself from play. Can get somewhat broken in epic.

Scry and Die Attacking from around corners, while staying hidden. Moderate to broken, depending on the situation.

Skimisher Fly in, attack, and fly away. Also prevents enemies from coming close. Moderate to Broken depending on the enemy, but shouldn't make the game un-fun, as the rest of your team is at risk, and you have enough weaknesses.

Indestructible Simply won't die, even if you sleep though combat. One of THE most abusive character in 4e.

Death's Gatekeeper A fun twist on a healic, making your party "unkillable". Overpowered to Broken, but shouldn't actually make the game un-fun, just TPK proof.

Death's Gatekeeper mk2, (Stealth Edition) Make your party "unkillable", and you hidden, while doing solid damage. Stronger then the above, but also easier for a DM to shut down. Broken, until your DM get's enough of it.

Domination and Death Dominate everything then kill them quickly. Only works @ 30, but is broken multiple ways.

The warlock isn't out-DPR-ing a ranger... I've updated with some other ranger at-wills for reference. And yes, barbarians are weaker because they don't have a striker feature such as quarry, sneak attack, or curse. Their advantages are their higher AC and hit points.

0.65*15.5 = 10.075, which is less than Eldritch Blast and one of the reasons why I included that power instead. Eldritch Strike is also a power that only fits in certain specialized builds (a lot of which aren't actually warlocks).

The DPRs assume no feats for better standardization. In general, the at-will power DPR calculations assume flanking if the power suggests that an ally should be adjacent to the target, allowing for a better than normal result from gaining that CA. That's the reasoning behind Leading Strike and Righteous Brand assuming CA, while Twin Strike and Howling Strike do not.

The list is by no means an exhaustive one, nor a 100% standardized one. It's meant as a resource for people who are curious about various at-will options... it's assumed that the assumptions for each power would be read and taken into account. It would be quite difficult to create something standardized to an extent that would make everyone happy, IMHO...

EDIT: I think that a previous poster has a point about CA assumptions though. In general, it's extremely easy for melee characters to get flanking and therefore combat advantage, while this is by no means the case for ranged or chargers. With this in mind, I'll update all melee at-will powers to assume CA.

Amazing thread! I was wishing to see something like this, especially for level 30 strikers at wills and novas.

Sadly, well, actually, luckily, i got more work (and more pay) and found a place to play D&D... so my free time to try to do it went down by a large notch. But I'll try to contribute to it here and there.

With your encouragement, I've started on the level 30 at-will comparison with preliminary DPR calculations for two at-will powers - Twin Strike and Piercing Strike.

For comparasion of optimized "pure class" & "not too cheesy" strikers i was thinking in just kidnapping LDB rangers and barbarian.

Sadly things won't be as easy for classes like assassins or monks, even for rogues, the colaboration of good optimizers with deep knowledge of those classes in order to build good specimens to use as test subjects will probably be required, if only because otherwhise the proyect might be more time consuming that what a single person can do.

Assumptions: Invoking shrouds every 2 rounds not to lose them due to the target's death.Nightstalker bonus appliesFlankingFeat: Weapon proficiency Fullblade (a classic, even if high crit is not taken into consideration here)

Even with basic assumptions the assassin starts to lag behind other strikers. With more optimization the gap widens especially with the avenger and the ranger, due to more crit exploitation by the first and more static bonuses addition for the second.

A side note, that can maybe suggest something about how to fix the assassin just came to my mind. A typical assassin build goes Assassin/Soul Thief/Perfect Slayer (the only assassin ED). For a basic analysis like the one we are looking at the only interesting feature is the 30th level ED feature that basically says: when you invoke your shrouds they do not disappear. If you can place 4 shrouds on a target then this feature contributes for 28,75 points of DPR which will bring the DPR of this assassin to just 61 once four shrouds are present on the target which is the level of the "vanilla" striker, and brings the effect of the feature from a measly 20% of the DPR to a whopping 50%.